Ad Sense

As with all businesses, the website you create is meant to help you make money.  A well executed site can bring in more business and increase awareness of your company and its products or services.  If you start with a great website and add a feature on your site that can make money for you as well, it well is worth it.  Adding Google’s Ad Sense can do this for you.

What is Ad Sense?

This ad serving application offered by Google gives website owners the ability to add advertisements to their websites or blogs that can bring in additional income for their businesses on a "per click" or "per impression" basis.   These advertisements can be via video, image or text, depending on what you prefer.

The ads that will appear on your site or blog are generated by Google’s internet search technology to supply ads based on your website’s or blog’s content, the visitor’s physical location and other factors related to the visitor such as their history of websites visited.  The ads that will be displayed are those that are most relevant and may be of interest to your site’s visitors, thus encouraging them to click on them and generate revenue for your site.


For example, if you wrote an article on your website about the country of Costa Rica, the Ad Sense ads that would appear may be travel agencies that specialize in trips to that destination, airlines that fly into San Jose or tour companies that offer packages to that destination.  If your site visitor clicks on the travel agency link, you will be paid for that click.

In comparison with banner ads, Ad Sense ads are fairly unobtrusive and do not interfere with the look of your site.  You can choose where you would like these ads placed on your website and what format (text, image or video) you would like them to be.

In addition to the ads, Ad Sense allows you to add a Google search for your site’s visitors which you can earn money via the display of ads on the search’s results pages.

To sign up for Ad Sense, you will fill out an easy online application.  After review of your application, you will receive an email welcoming you to Ad Sense.  This generally happens within a week but it may take a little longer if a high volume of applications are received.  As long as you understand and follow the program’s policies along with meeting any eligibility requirements, you will be accepted.  Once you are s accepted, you can sign in to your account to get the HTML (hyper text markup language) code to display ads on your website.

We all like to “try before we buy”, but in this case there is no “buy” as Ad Sense is a free program.  There is nothing to lose if you sign up for Ad Sense so you can feel free to try it and see for yourself how it will work for you.